Conspiracy of Silence

Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren's shameful campaign gimmick.

By

James Taranto

January 24, 2012

"The Senate race in Massachusetts is going for the civility vote," FoxNews.com reports, using upbeat language to describe an appalling agreement between Republican incumbent Scott Brown and his Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren. The senator tells the network "that he and Warren have signed off on a 'document, legal and binding,' " that will "ban third party ads from their race."

The "ban" would be enforced via a mechanism similar to an Arizona law that the Supreme Court struck down last summer. In the name of "leveling the playing field," the law provided that if, say, you gave $100 to a Democratic candidate or to an advocacy organization supporting his election, his Republican opponent would collect a like amount from the taxpayer. As the court held, this amounted to a penalty against political speech: An Arizonan could not support the candidate of his choice without effectively supporting his opponent as well.

ENLARGE

Sen. Brown: Shut up or he'll pay.
Associated Press

The Brown-Warren agreement does not seek to equalize spending between the two candidates, both of whom are well funded. It is a sort of suicide pact, providing, as Fox explains, that the two "donate to charity half the price of ads that are run in their name in the state." Says Brown: "By having 50 percent of that negative or positive ad buy go to charity of the other person's choice, it's an incentive to keep those groups out."

Because it is a contract between private parties rather than a government action, the Brown-Warren agreement is not unconstitutional. Yet even if the means are legitimate, the end--suppressing political speech--is foul.

Yes, Brown is a Republican running in a very liberal state, and yes, today's "liberals" are not very liberal when it comes to free speech. Politicians sometimes have to compromise on matters of principle. But to our mind this goes so far that the Massachusetts Senate race reminds us of the Iran-Iraq war. As Henry Kissinger is supposed to have said, it's a pity they can't both lose.

Now for the Bad News "Good news from the female half of the [black] community, writes Walter Russell Mead of The American Interest:

A piece in the Washington Post analyzes a recent survey which finds Black women doing well in nearly all conceivable metrics. As increasing numbers of Black women enter the professional world, they are beginning to close the the [sic] earnings gap between themselves and their white peers. And the good news goes beyond the monetary: the survey finds Black women to be more ambitious, more religious, and more optimistic about their future than many other groups, with a strong understanding of the value of hard work and achievement. . . .

One very interesting finding: more and more Black women are setting up as entrepreneurs. According to census bureau figures, 900,000 businesses are owned by Black women, a sharp expansion in recent years. Moving from bureaucracy to business is necessary to success in the 21st century; that so many Black women have figured this out and are acting accordingly is excellent news.

Mead then alludes to the dark cloud around this silver lining:

As is perhaps true for women of many races, the biggest problem Black women face today, according to the Post/Kaiser Foundation survey, is all about men. The disproportionately high incarceration rates and lack of job opportunities for many Black males means that many Black women are not in long term relationships or stable marriages.

Several of Mead's commenters speculate resentfully that black women owe this success to affirmative action preferences in corporate hiring and government contracting. We'd say this misses the central point. After all, if those preferences are such a boon, why are black men doing so poorly? The real answer is that the normalization of single motherhood, and the concomitant decline of marriage, led to both the marginalization of black men and--with an assist from welfare reform--the success of black women.

The trends among less-affluent whites point in the same direction, as Charles Murray notes in his new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010," excerpted in The Wall Street Journal Saturday:

In 1960, just 2% of all white births were nonmarital. When we first started recording the education level of mothers in 1970, 6% of births to white women with no more than a high-school education . . . were out of wedlock. By 2008, 44% were nonmarital.

Among college-educated white women, the illegitimacy rate grew sixfold between 1970 and 2008, but from a low base--1% to 6%.

Feminism and sexual permissiveness are moving America toward matriarchy, a state in which men are increasingly superfluous and, as evidenced by the high black male incarceration rate, dangerous. Black women's economic success is to be applauded, but the broader picture is cause for worry, not optimism.

The mayor told a panel at the University of Chicago that the president should say very little about his first term, and focus on what he would do in a second term. Emanuel said, "What you do with the first term is say, 'I inherited a mess, I did what I could to stabilize it, and here's what we're gonna do.' "

"I inherited a mess." Of course! Obama must be kicking himself for not having thought of that--and for letting such a political genius as Emanuel go.

Meanwhile, Obamabot journalist Jonathan Alter has one of those "Five Myths" columns in the Washington Post. According to Alter, Obama turns out to be neither a socialist nor a tool of Wall Street, and he is a strong leader whose stimulus was actually a resounding success. Uh-huh. Only one of the five myths promises a debunking unfavorable to the president, and even here, Alter fails to deliver:

3. Obama is an effective public speaker.

Obama's lofty speeches during the 2008 campaign led even his detractors to admit that he is a gifted orator. Some critics try to minimize his skill by saying he relies on a teleprompter--a ridiculous charge considering that he often writes big chunks of his speeches and often speaks off-the-cuff.

That said, there are few examples of Obama's speeches actually moving popular opinion. That's because he speaks in impressive paragraphs, not memorable sentences. He is allergic to sound bites, and that keeps him from effectively framing his goals and achievements.

The roots of this allergy may lie in his famous Philadelphia speech on race in 2008, which followed the revelations of incendiary comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The speech lacked memorable lines, but it was a big hit. I believe it convinced Obama that the public could absorb complex ideas without bumper sticker lines. He was wrong.

So it turns out Obama is an ineffective public speaker because the public lacks the intellectual acumen to appreciate the brilliance of Obama's speeches.

A word about that "speech on race": It lacked not only "memorable lines" but any shred of an original idea. It was an exposition of utterly conventional left-liberal racial doctrine, bolstered with some personal anecdotes and delivered in a tone of utter reasonableness.

The tone was the entire point of the address, which was a "speech on race" only in the sense that that was the subject matter. In terms of its purpose, it was a speech about Obama, designed to distance himself from his spiritual mentor and convince his listeners that he was not a hater like Wright. It succeeded in that--especially inasmuch as it was directed at people in the media, who wanted to believe the best of Obama. That, not its substance or any rhetorical stylishness, was all it took to make it "a big hit."

A Crowd Pleaser Without a Crowd Last night's NBC debate between the four remaining GOP presidential candidates was deathly dull, yet it might have served a purpose. Newt Gingrich, who gave a lackluster performance, "on Tuesday morning threatened not [to] participate in any future debates with audiences that have been instructed to be silent." The former speaker did much better in last week's Fox and CNN debates, in which the audience was permitted to clap, cheer and even stand.

"In an interview with the morning show 'Fox and Friends,' Mr. Gingrich said NBC's rules amounted to stifling free speech," the Times reports. That's bunk. NBC was exercising its right to free speech in setting the rules for its forum. And, as the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin notes, as a result voters learned something about the candidates, and Gingrich in particular:

This is one more indication that Gingrich is not a general-election candidate. In the presidential debates they don't allow audience reaction either. At the start of the Sept. 26, 2008, debate Jim Lehrer explained: "The audience here in the hall has promised to remain silent, no cheers, no applause, no noise of any kind, except right now, as we welcome Senators Obama and McCain."

Rubin strongly supports Mitt Romney, but she's got Gingrich's number here. If he does well in debates only when he has a crowd to play to, the claim that he is the man to debate Obama is awfully unpersuasive.

Fact-Free 'Fact Check' The Associated Press "fact checks" last night's debate, and again shows how ridiculous the whole genre is:

Romney: "I don't think we can possibly retake the White House if the person who's leading our party is the person who was working for the chief lobbyist of Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac was paying Speaker Gingrich $1.6 million at the same time Freddie Mac was costing the people of Florida millions upon millions of dollars."

The facts: While going after Gingrich forcefully on the issue, Romney did not mention his own earnings from the government-backed lender and its sister entity, Fannie Mae, which came to light in his most recent financial disclosure report.

The report shows he has as much as $500,000 invested in the two lenders. GOP presidential hopefuls almost across the board have blamed the two institutions for contributing to the housing crisis that helped to drag the nation into recession. Among Romney's ties: a mutual fund worth up to $500,000 that includes assets from both lenders among other government income, and separate investments in each of the lenders in Romney's individual retirement account, each worth between $100,000 and $250,000.

Romney campaign officials said Monday the investments were handled by a trustee with no direction by the candidate.

The AP not only does not refute Romney's factual assertions, it doesn't even evaluate them. Instead, it responds to Romney's criticism of Gingrich by offering its own criticism of Romney. That's fine in a commentary by a Gingrich partisan, or a Democratic partisan seeking to spread the dirt as widely as possible. But the AP is supposed to be in the business of news.

Other Than That, the Story Was Accurate "An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated whom Newt Gingrich is said to have asked for an 'open marriage.' It was an ex-wife, not his current wife."--New York Times website, Jan. 24

Metaphor Alert "With Gingrich defining the GOP brand, the Republicans' dream--unified government: a trifecta of holding the House, winning the Senate and the White House--might become three strikes and they are out."--George Will, Washington Post, Jan. 24

In the Land of the Twee and the Home of the Grave The dreadful scolds at NoLabels.org report on their website that they have their own anthem: "When Lisa Borders told Grammy award-winning R&B artist Akon about No Labels, he was so inspired that he stayed up all night to write a song." Here's the chorus, quoted verbatim from the site:

He's a democrat He's republican There's a fight and a race who's gonna win Put your differences aside man if you can Cos there's way too many people suffering I wish they didn't have no labels There'd be more change with no labels

Ugh, pass the Dramamine. Anyway, apparently the Nolabelists think they're too good for the actual national anthem.

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